Her death has shattered not only her mother, but the doctors and nurses at Nepean Hospital who tried desperately to save her life. They want to share her story to warn other people that even easily available, non-prescription medications can be deadly if used to excess.

"I know she didn't want to die," Mrs Dodd said. "She just wanted to make herself feel better, but she didn't realise the damage she was doing to her liver with all the paracetamol she was taking".

Last week the Sun Heraldrevealed federal drug regulators are considering making common pain killers that contain codeine along with other medicines such as paracetamol and Nurofen prescription-only, because of concerns that people are becoming addicted and suffering serious health consequences from overdosing on them.

Mrs Dodd said her daughter had bravely fought against mental health difficulties her whole life, but before she died in February she had been working in a job she loved at the Mount Tomah botanic gardens, and had just completed a diploma in accounting.

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"She was always very good at maths," she said. "She was very clever in many ways, but she just had many problems that really got the better of her."

The 38-year old had been applying for accounting jobs but had received few responses as it was just before Christmas, something Mrs Dodd believes may have pushed her to take the medications to help cope.

Tragically, after she died on February 2, her family started receiving calls offering her job interviews.

Ms Cunningham was brought to the Nepean Hospital emergency department the same day she died, feeling very drowsy and suffering from low blood pressure.

Her condition deteriorated quickly, and she became unconscious and developed organ failure. It emerged she had been hiding her addiction to pain medication from her mother, who she lived with, and recently had been taking as many as 40 tablets a day.

Associate Professor Martin Weltman, the head of the department of gastroenterology and hepatology and Nepean, said Ms Cunningham was treated in intensive care and was assessed for an emergency liver transplant, which ultimately was unavailable.

She just wanted to make herself feel better.

Robin Dodd.

"[The staff] were having to explain what was happening to the patient and her mother as it was happening, so it was very traumatising​," he said.

He said the damage to her organs from the paracetamol that was combined with the codeine in the medications she was taking happened slowly, and so would not have immediately made her feel sick or given her a clear indication of the damage she was doing.

"She just reached a tipping point where she had one or two days too many taking the tablets," he said. "If she had even taken all that paracetamol in one go we do better at treating that, because the liver has a reserve when it has just been challenged once," he said.

He said doctors were increasingly seeing serious consequences from people misusing drugs containing codeine, including patients with serious stomach ulcers - in one case so bad they completely blocked the patient's stomach - from taking too much ibuprofen​, another drug that is commonly combined with codeine.

Rod Bishop, the director of the Emergency Department at Nepean, said the hospital saw a lot of poisoning from prescription and non-prescription medications.

"Just because a medication is available over the counter doesn't mean it is not potentially dangerous," he said. "They are good drugs if you take them as recommended, but they all come with some risk if they are abused."

Mrs Dodd said she believes her daughter should never have been able to buy such large quantities of the medications without a prescription. But she hopes that other people in similar situations to her daughter will learn from her death.

"I just feel I would like something good to come out of this," she said.

Pain Doctors call for ban on over-the-counter codeine meds

Doctors who specialise in treating pain have called for the national drug regulator to ban sales of codeine-containing medications without a doctor's prescription.

The Faculty of Pain Medicine of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists has made a submission to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which the Sun Herald last week revealed was assessing the status of the drugs.

Faculty dean Ted Shipton said the low levels of codeine in over-the-counter medications meant they were not very effective, as well as carrying high potential for addiction and harm.

"Codeine is a weak opioid​ and addicts swallow dozens of these tablets a day for effect," Professor Shipton said. "People who are misusing these over-the-counter preparations are invariably taking very high doses of paracetamol and ibuprofen for the codeine effect and that kind of dosage can lead to serious liver damage, stomach ulcerations, renal failure and even death."

But the chief executive officer of Pain Australia, Lesley Brydon, said while the Faculty was right to be concerned, people suffering chronic pain were often in desperate need, and often could not afford to regularly go to the doctor.

"The health system does not support access to pain programs which use non-drug therapies such as special exercise and psychological therapies and are far more helpful than medication in managing chronic pain," she said. "Before any decision is made there should be an independent review."